This time of year, the salebarns are full of bidders, buyers and cream pie connoisseurs. The adrenaline and anxiety in the building and around the ring is as thick as the gravy served in the café. In the back of the barn, the crews are bringing loads of cattle, many of which are 600-ish to 800-pound-ish stocker or feeder calves. These are calves weaned and probably familiar with the feed bunk. They’re ready to go to a feedyard and fill some of the empty pens that so many yards in the area have sitting, ready to be filled.

Though cattle producers are experiencing record prices, they’re also paying record input prices. What John F. Kennedy said remains true, “The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.” The cattle markets are in significantly better shape than the grain markets, and for the growers producing record high yields of the highest quality grains, that is frustrating especially when the harvest is done with millions of dollars of equipment.

Just as in JFK’s day, cattle producers and farmers lack control over input costs and market prices. The positive developments since even the troubled 1980s have been highly subsidized crop insurance, expanded trade, and for corn growers, an ethanol market that didn’t exist 40 years ago. These things will likely keep another farm crisis at bay, but today’s market is susceptible to other outside forces. And forces there are aplenty.

Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Sid Miller, in response to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent report listing the national cattle herd at its lowest level in 75 years, offered heifer tax credits as a potential solution.

Miller is calling for Heifer Retention Tax Credit, modeled after the Child Tax Credit, that incentivizes cattle producers to expand their herds which, in turn, increases beef production and lowers beef prices for consumers.

According to the Beef Cow Replacement Value Forecast from the University of Nebraska, the probability for payback of a heifer purchased in this market, calculated at an estimated $4,000, is dim at less than 1%. It’s difficult for producers to turn down the prices heifers are fetching, making expansion tough.

The major factor we discussed before selling our calves last week was the drought conditions. With negligible moisture anywhere we operate either on pasture, corn stalks, or in the feedyard, we may lack the forage needed to run the cattle we have, much less a large group of retained heifers.

The day we weaned calves was the day President Donald Trump spoke about bringing Argentinian beef into the U.S. to make beef more affordable at the meat counter. The load of calves we left Wyoming with was worth far more than the load we rolled into Colorado with that day. Though the market rebounded, it’s still reactive to social media whims, which is one of the more annoying facts of the industry today.

The day we hauled feeder calves to the sale is the day JBS workers in Greeley represented by a union voted to strike. The boards reacted quickly, but hopefully the demand will remain high in the salebarn by the cattle buyers still trying to fill feedyard pens.

In Ogallala, Nebraska, last week, barn records feel with 500-pound steers fetched as much as $565/hundredweight. As much as I hate to add any additional external factors to cattle prices, I also can’t imagine tempting a producer to retain heifers for a $50 credit just to give up a $2,825 feeder calf.

An economist I’m not, but I grew up in the 1980s as the daughter of an oil-and-gas landman, and I make my living as an adult raising cattle. These facts make me rather allergic to inviting additional outside meddling into the markets that already have plenty of outside noise. Pasture conditions, aging cattle producers dispersing herds, loss of pasture, the price of commodities, the ill timing of tweets, the ongoing closure of the southern border to Mexican cattle, the perennial threat of misinformed legislation, and price of diesel is plenty, thanks. Let it ride.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication.